US Media Whitewashes Israel’s Plan To Ethnically Cleanse 40,000 Of Its Arab Citizens

By Rania Khalek

December 09, 2013 "Information Clearing House - With the Israeli government moving closer towards implementation of a massive ethnic cleansing campaign known as the Prawer-Begin Plan, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to spin the “Jewish and democratic state” as anything other than a racist experiment. But that hasn’t stopped mainstream US outlets from performing language wizardry in an attempt to distort the latest atrocity about to be committed by America’s greatest ally.

Absent outside intervention, the Prawer Plan will destroy 35 unrecognized Arab villages in the Negev (Naqab) desert, forcibly removing 40,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel from their ancestral lands. Israel will then “concentrate” them into reservation-style cities, where, as journalist Max Blumenthal recently explained, “they will be transformed into an urban proletariat to basically serve the Jewish population.” Meanwhile, Jewish-only neighborhoods will be erected over the ashes of their destroyed villages to combat the “demographic threat” posed by non-Jews in a country invested in ethnic purity.

It’s a racist campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing, plain and simple. But that’s not how mainstream US outlets see it.

the sound of silence in here is deafening. This is the biggest indictment of your screwed up values.

You've been so brainwashed to hate A-rabs that you are perfectly willing to look the other way while Israeli storm troopers drive out the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.

Your anti semitism is pathetic. Yes, A-rabs are semitic.

MHG

You're confusing compassion for Arabs with the cultural assassination of the Jewish state of Israel. Go look at a map of the Middle East. Look really hard. Then grab your bifocals and look even harder. Israel is a spec of territory. There is plenty of land run by Arab populations in the Middle East. These Arabs should go settle there.

You're confusing compassion for Arabs with the cultural assassination of the Jewish state of Israel. Go look at a map of the Middle East. Look really hard. Then grab your bifocals and look even harder. Israel is a spec of territory. There is plenty of land run by Arab populations in the Middle East. These Arabs should go settle there.

Hogwash. The bedouins have been living in Palestine for thousands of years -- more or less the same life style. They threaten no one.

What Zio site did you get that term "cultural assassination"? More bs.

The truth is that Israel isolated itself (i.e., Jewish culture) from Arab culture by constructing a 20 foot high security wall -- in the process grabbing (stealing) large chunks of Arab land.

You're confusing compassion for Arabs with the cultural assassination of the Jewish state of Israel. Go look at a map of the Middle East. Look really hard. Then grab your bifocals and look even harder. Israel is a spec of territory. There is plenty of land run by Arab populations in the Middle East. These Arabs should go settle there.

Gaff will not rest until Al-Andalus is back in the hands of its rightful owners.

Hogwash. The bedouins have been living in Palestine for thousands of years -- more or less the same life style. They threaten no one.

What Zio site did you get that term "cultural assassination"? More bs.

The truth is that Israel isolated itself (i.e., Jewish culture) from Arab culture by constructing a 20 foot high security wall -- in the process grabbing (stealing) large chunks of Arab land.

There is nothing wrong with keeping their culture unique and whole. Again, geographically speaking, Israel is but a spec of dirt; There is no reason why such a small section of land should be coerced into committing cultural suicide.

There is nothing wrong with keeping their culture unique and whole. Again, geographically speaking, Israel is but a spec of dirt; There is no reason why such a small section of land should be coerced into committing cultural suicide.

Journalist Max Blumenthal’s latest book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel has been one of the most controversial and enlightening books of 2013. It’s a fearless, no holds barred take on life in Israel and the brutal occupation of Palestine. Needless the say, not all have been happy with Blumenthal’s take on Israeli culture and politics. I recently caught up with Max to discuss his new book and the backlash he’s received from the pro-Israel coterie. -JF

Joshua Frank: Max, seems your latest book Goliath has really caused a stir among right-wing Zionists and other liberal defenders of Israel, like your Nation colleague Eric Alterman. What’s all the fuss about?

Max Blumenthal: Goliath is the first on-the ground, journalistic portrait of the real Israel that has been whitewashed and covered up by the mainstream American media.

The book reveals a society overrun with extremism, with open racism emitting from the highest levels of government, inspiring anti-Arab and anti-African riots from the West Bank to Tel Aviv while the siege of Gaza deepens. Many of the pivotal events I detailed at length through background research and first-hand reporting were buried or ignored by the New York Times and have scarcely been examined even in progressive American media.

The atmosphere I captured in the pages of Goliath is the one that veteran Israelis from Uri Avnery to former Maariv editor Amnon Danker to former Haaretz editor-in-chief David Landau have described in no uncertain terms as fascistic. Through the experience of almost a year on the ground in Israel-Palestine, I was able to capture the feeling of the atmosphere they described and to bring it to life on the pages of my book. Obviously, pro-Israel zealots were not terribly happy about this.

There was also the fact that I did not write Goliath with concern for Israel’s anguished “soul,” or with any abiding belief in the absolute necessity of a Jewish state; that I did not advance the fantastical notion that the Israel that exists behind the 1949 Armistice Lines is a vibrant democracy. And I refused to pay lip service to the idea that the Palestinians were partially at fault for their own dispossession — that “both sides” were responsible for the crisis. This is what you are expected to do if you wish to cater to Jewish-American opinion from a liberal perspective.

I refused to take this approach not only because I reject the Zionist narrative but because it is deeply dishonest and actually requires intellectual contortions about the present and the willfull distortion of the past. That my book managed to gain traction despite my rejection of the established liberal Zionist narrative framework was another reason so many viewed it as threatening...

US Secretary of State John Kerry spent last week testing the waters with Israelis and Palestinians over his so-called framework agreement – designed to close the gaps between the two sides. But the issues he is trying to resolve appear more intractable by the day.

As he headed to the region, Israel’s hawkish cabinet ministers gave their blessing to legislation to annex the Jordan Valley, a large swath of the West Bank that might otherwise be the Palestinian state’s economic backbone and gateway to the outside world.

To underscore their point, the interior minister, Gideon Saar, a close friend of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led a group of rightwing politicians on a tour of the valley during which they held a dedication ceremony for a new settlement neighbourhood.

In a speech there, the deputy foreign minister, Zeev Elkin, averred that the Jordan Valley must remain under “Israeli sovereignty forever”. Without it, Israel would return to what he called the “Auschwitz borders” before the 1967 occupation began.

On Sunday, as Kerry left, the defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, added a new condition: peace was impossible, he argued, as long as the Palestinians and their schoolbooks “incited” against Israel, even quoting from a government-compiled “Palestinian incitement index”.

The hyperbole overshadowed two Israeli surveys that might one day provide a yardstick by which to judge an equivalent “Israeli incitement index”.

An opinion poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Israeli Jews believe the conflict’s Palestinian narrative – including the nakba, the great dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 to create Israel – should be taught in schools.

This flies in the face of Netanyahu’s own view. His government passed a law in 2011 effectively banning public institutions from giving a platform to nakba commemorations.

The other study, following an experiment in a handful of schools, demonstrated that, when Jewish students are exposed to spoken Arabic at an early age, between 10 and 12, they hold dramatically less hostile and stereotypical views of Arabs. Currently, many Jewish students never learn Arabic.

With the experimental programme employing teachers from Israel’s large Palestinian minority, the study noted that for most of the Jewish children it was the first time they had developed a close relationship with an Arab.

The education ministry, however, was reported to have waved aside the findings and is apparently failing to fund the existing, small programme, let alone expand it.

This is no oversight. Successive Israeli governments have carefully engineered the structure of Israeli society to ensure that Jewish and Palestinian citizens, the latter comprising a fifth of the population, are kept in separate linguistic, cultural, educational and emotional worlds.

The reasoning is not hard to discern. The last thing Israeli leaders want is for Jewish and Palestinian citizens to develop shared interests, forge friendships and...

Israel is taking advantage of the war in neighboring Syria to exploit Syrian land in the Golan. Is this even being reported in the US media?

MHG

Israel Grants Oil Rights in Syria to Murdoch and Rothschild

By Craig Murray

January 22, 2014 "Information Clearing House - Israel has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild. This from a 2010 Genie Energy press release:

Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.”

“I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.”

For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.

Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria.

In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.